Unions love Vice President Joe Biden in Burlington

A man wears a pro-union T-shirt that reads "Watching your back since 1977 AFSCME Iowa Council 61," at a rally with Vice President Joe Biden in Dubuque. (Jason Noble/The Register)

Burlington, Ia. – Make no mistake, Vice President Joe Biden’s rally here on Monday afternoon was a union rally.

Biden’s message of support for working people and unions like the UAW, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and others – and his request for their votes – was unmistakable.

He was introduced by Bruce Scheitlen, a floor worker at the local Champion Spark Plug plant and president of the UAW Local 1237, who credited the Obama administration’s bailout of General Motors and Chrysler for saving jobs here.

“If Chrysler would’ve gone under, the Burlington plant would’ve lost a third or more of its business, meaning job losses here in Burlington,” he said. “Thanks to our leaders in the White House, that did not happen.”

And to see whether that message played well, one needed look no further than the t-shirts in the crowd.

One man wore a t-shirt bearing the words, “Walter Reuther fought for you and me” and a portrait of the labor leader who presided over the UAW in its 1950s and ’60s heyday.

Another man’s shirt advertised AFSCME Iowa Council 61with the phrase, “Watching your back since 1977” and the image of an eagle.

Bob Gustafson wears a pro-Union T-shirt at a rally with Vice President Joe Biden in Dubuque. (Jason Noble/The Register)

“My dad brought me up to be union, and I been union ever since,” said Bob Gustafson, a UAW member who works in the paint department at the Case New Holland plant in Burlington. “The Democrats are way to go. They’re more for the middle class, not like the Republicans are.”

Gustafson, whose UAW t-shirt featured a clenched fist grasping a bolt of lightning, said the vote he cast for Barack Obama in 2008 was the first of his life – and promised to follow it up with another this year.

The hole dug by the policies of Republican President George W. Bush over two terms was too deep for Obama to fill in just four years, he said.

“Obama hasn’t been given a chance yet, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.